The 2014 Pavillon Rouge de Château Margaux has a crisp, precise, Pauillac-like bouquet with fine delineation, a touch of graphite infusing the black fruit, austere but rather compelling. The palate is medium-bodied with fine, quite supple tannin. I appreciate the balance and elegance of this Margaux, somewhat saline towards the finish with impressive precision. Very fine, very delicious. Tasted blind at the annual Southwold tasting. 2019 - 2035
Love the fruit and juicy character to this second wine of Margaux. Medium to full body, superfine tannins and a long finish. The freshness and savory finish are a big plus. Drink in 2020.
Tasted blind. Round and fruity and racy. Transparent and ‘new style’. Lots of tannin but well balanced and sincere. Needs quite a bit of time! Very dry end.
Drink 2025-2040
Margaux's second wine is made from a large proportion of the Chateau's total production. There is also a third wine (that is not sold En Primeur) and a fourth wine that is sold off in bulk. 36% of this year's production went into the Grand Vin, with 24% to Pavillon Rouge and 40% to third and fourth wines. 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, and 1% Petit Verdot in the blend in 2014. Medium-deep purple colour in the glass. Elegant and perfumed with plenty of fragrant flowers, creamy vanilla and ripe red cherries on the nose. Soft, rounded, fresh and restrained on the palate. This is a floral and delicate style which is focused and approachable. The tannins are ripe, soft and refined, and will make this wine immediately pleasing in the bottle. Very silky on the finish.
The 2014 Pavillon Rouge is made from 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and a splash of Petit Verdot. It’s a beautiful second wine that shines for its elegance, as well as its sexy, sumptuous texture. Giving up lots of spice, dried flowers, sandalwood, and cassis fruits, it has more than a passing resemblance to its bigger sibling. With medium-bodied richness, sweet tannin, nicely integrated oak, and charming, character filled personality, I’d happily drink bottles any day over the coming two decades. 2018 - 2038
Gorgeous, with a velvety, caressing feel, as warm plum sauce and blackberry confiture notes glide over a thoroughly embedded graphite edge. Rather lush, but light tobacco, bay and iron hints keep this focused even as the fruit takes center stage. Best from 2019 through 2029. 9,583 cases made.
Fresh, fragrant floral with a mix of black and red fruits there is a lot happening on the nose. Sweet velvety the mid palate has a supple richness fresher at the back the finish lighter with fragrant charm. 2025-36
Deeply coloured, savoury, compact and pretty tight at the moment, this tastes like a wine that belongs to Haut-Brion. Mineral, taut and refreshing, but with well judged tannins and good underlying fruit, it benefited from the demotion of 21% of the crop to a third wine.
The 2014 Pavillon Rouge is a blend of 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and 1% Petit Verdot. Bottled in July 2016, it remains quite rich and outgoing on the nose with copious red cherry, blackberry and spice-box aromas. With aeration it reveals a little more sous-bois, the oak nicely integrated. The palate is medium-bodied with a tightly knit opening. Certainly this has lost the corpulence that it showed in barrel, lost that puppy fat. Now the linearity comes through, engendered by the cool nights during the growing season, and still delivers that mineral-rich finish. I still maintain that it will need three years in bottle just to soften the tannins. Drink Date 2020-2038
The Pavillon Rouge de Margaux 2014 is a blend of 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and 1% Petit Verdot, which Paul Pontallier remarked is almost the same as the grand vin 20 years ago. The nose needs time to coalesce in the glass – a little disjointed at first, though it “finds its groove” and offers ripe blackberry and boysenberry fruits, perhaps richer than I was anticipating. The palate is medium-bodied with a fleshy, almost corpulent opening: a mixture of red and black fruit and a pinch of white pepper. There is good weight in the mouth, quite linear with a nicely controlled, quite mineral-rich finish. This is a very fine Pavillon Rouge ’14 that will probably need three or four years in bottle. Drink: 2018 - 2030.
This is very structured and strong for the second wine of Pavillon Rouge. Full and very chewy. Yet it's ripe and intense. Makes you think. Very well done.
Mid crimson. Rather a muddy, indistinct nose. But the palate structure is wonderful. And there is no excess of acidity. Racy, sinewy, fresh but not tart. Paul Pontallier feels this Pavillon Rouge is the best since 2009 and 2010, because of selection. Very graceful indeed. Spreads right across the palate with lovely texture. But fairly early maturing. He admits that Pavillon Rouge 2014 is better than some of his vintages of Ch Margaux. Very appetising and really rather beautiful. 13.5% Drink 2020-2030
